Cute Widdle Flash Game (and an interview)
February 6th, 2007Today, my captive audience, you are all in for a real treat, for I have finished my first-ever one room game using the Lassie engine! It’s called “When We Were Kids”, and you play a little girl who’s just gotten her beloved handheld gaming system stolen by the school bully. It’s also my first real attempt at creating an adventure game puzzle with multiple solutions. And it’s completely playable from within your web browser. So, check it out already. It’ll only take a few minutes of your precious time, after all.
In other news, there’s a lovely little interview with yours truly at I Eat Games, in which I talk about Cubert, TGTTPOACS, and life. You should all definitely check that out as well.
February 6th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Nice work Deidra. I’d have liked a bit of explanation of how the game engine works, but I got there in the end.
How are you finding Lassie? I was thinking of having a tinker, but I don’t have a copy of flash (which the creators recommend). Is it a ‘friendly’ system to use? And is the flash part of it for creating character animations/objects/scenery and do you think it would be possible to use an alternative to Flash (ToonBoom/Moho)?
Sorry - lot’s of questions arising from what was supposed to be a simple ‘well done’.
February 6th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Very cute. Reminds me of the meanies in elementary school… ^^; Can’t wait to play the rest of the game.
February 6th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Tom-
You can use any alternative to Flash so long as it can save SWF files, and can publish .fla files.
I’m not sure how compatible with Flash some of those programs are, but you could give it a try.
February 6th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Thanks for letting me know. Moho exports swfs, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t publish fla files. I’ll investigate some alternatives, as I’ve always found Flash to be the way that madness lies. Cheers.
February 6th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
You only need Flash to publish the actual game data. You can make your graphics and sprites any other way that can save as a SWF, but the game data compiles as an action script text file that needs to be published by Flash. It’s actually very easy. Within the game editor you press a button that says “Export for Action Script”. You then load a file that comes with the editor called “_data.fla” in Flash, hit the publish button, and it’s done. You don’t have to learn much of the actual Flash application at all.
February 6th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Cool game. I’m not sure how much is the engine and how much is you, but the interface is pretty sweet too.
I think I discoverd a bug though - if you click around the screen a lot at the very beginning, before Morgan comes to take your Gamebot, you’ll move and she’ll never come.
February 6th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
I know, i’m such a pain in the ass. how many ways are there to beat this game? I found 3 so far…
February 6th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
Nice interview too. I liked it - nice to see what’s going on in another artist’s mind.
February 6th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Yup, that’s a known bug, and it’s a glitch in the engine, or so I’m told.
Also, there are a total of four ways to get your GameBot back.
February 7th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Does Kobayashi-Maru-ing it count?
February 8th, 2007 at 6:20 am
This is an interesting experiment, and one I’ve been playing around with for a while.
I tried designing something like this once, but I can’t seem to get find a proper way to offer puzzle solutions WITHOUT also confusing the hell out of the player. Although I have a very, very small idea which I just realised and must go try out! Egad!
February 8th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
It’s an extremely simple game, but it was a bit of fun to replay to see it all. I enjoyed the insults.
Now I’m off to read the interview.
March 8th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Very nice interview. Congrats!